Category: TEDtalk

Sam Berns, a motivational speaker diagnosed with Progeria stated, “Acknowledge your mentors and your community, because they are a very real aspect of every day life.” In this TedX Mid-Atlantic Conference presentation in Washington from October 2013, Sam outlines the road map to living with a healthy philosophy.

Not only is it important for the average person to live with a healthy viewpoint on life, but it is especially important for those that struggle with a disability. Sam’s sentiments perfectly align with the goals of Conductive Education Center of Orlando, which is to educate and support people living with a disability. One of the statements is important for the CECO to teach is “Be ok with what you ultimately can’t do, because there is so much you can do.” Through education and support, we can make a change in the world.

Vancouver, BC (April 2016). Author, Poet and Speaker, David Whyte, breaks the boundary between what can be said to change your vision on the past, present and future. Whyte is an Englishman who has written eight books with his topic of conversational nature of reality.

What can be defined in the lyrical bridge between past, present and the future? If you ask David Whyte, he uses two poems inspired by his nieces experience as she hiked 500 miles at El Camino de Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Whyte explains in his TED talk, “we tend to not have real conversations with one another, we tend to just speak”. He used this quote after he had a conversation with a TSA Worker at an airport who wanted someone to hear him out about his failing marriage. The TSA worker felt valuable and heard. Whyte explains how we need to make one another feel loved and worthy through the power of real thought and conversation.

Disability activist Robert M. Hensel said that “there is no greater disability in society than the inability to see a person as more.” Motivational speaker Nick Vujicic brought that sentiment to life during his talk at the September 2012 TEDxNoviSad in Novi Sad, Serbia. Speaking as a person who has personally faced many obstacles in life he gave a powerful talk on overcoming hopelessness.

“Turning Walls into Doors” was the theme of the TEDx event. Vujicic spoke directly to those living in a world of walls and reminds them that in these trials the greatest element to overcoming hopelessness is love, saying, “when we feel like we don’t have enough love and we don’t have enough hope, we start losing strength to live.”

There are hundreds of organizations in the world that extend this sentiment day after day through the work they do. The Conductive Education Center of Orlando is one organization that strives to build the bridge of hope and love for children and families dealing with motor cognitive disabilities.

SAN FRANCISCO, December 2013 – Maysoon Zayid is an Arab-American comedian who was born with cerebral palsy due to a doctor’s mistake when she was being delivered. As a result, her body shakes constantly. “I’m like Shakira meets Muhammad Ali,” Zayid jokes.

In her TED Talk, Zayid discusses growing up with CP, following her comedic dreams, and the underrepresentation of people with disabilities in entertainment. Many people with CP are unable to walk, but Zayid has been walking since she was 5-years-old in large part due to her father’s determination to teach her. She describes her parents as people who told her that nothing was impossible.

Zayid then went to college for acting and discovered the difficulty of being cast due to her disability. For this reason, she decided to become a comic and an advocate for people with disabilities. Zayid is now a successful stand-up comedian who performs in America as well as the Middle East.

To learn about resources for people with cerebral palsy in the Orlando area, check out CECO.